In January, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen urged regional parties to make all attempts to dislodge the current political dispensation, which has the least concern for democracy and the Constitution. His appeal was directed at a few regional political parties such as the Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party (SP) headed by Akhilesh Yadav, and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin. While regional parties in various parts of the country are gaining importance and are in a strong position to dictate terms to national parties, the absence of a strong regional party is being felt in Karnataka, which is all set to face elections to the Assembly next month.
Though there are a few regional parties in the state, it appears that they are not keen on fighting against the misrule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in terms of corruption, communalisation, and anti-democratic policies. None of these parties appears to be ready to ‘sacrifice’ for the greater common good of the society and join hands with those national parties that are presumed to be pro-people and uphold democratic and secular values.
Considered to be Karnataka’s most significant regional party, the Janata Dal (Secular), headed by former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy (supported by his father and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, who is the national president of the party), is keeping both the national parties – Congress and the BJP – on tenterhooks. There is every possibility that JD(S) candidates will prevent contenders from national parties from winning in at least 50 constituencies, besides pushing the state again towards another coalition experiment. This is specifically why both the Congress and BJP are trying to push JD(S) into a corner, dubbing it the ‘B’ team of each other.
The presence of regional party candidates in the Karnataka Assembly polls is considered the ‘path of thorns’ for the national parties to come to power. Similar will be the predicament of the Congress and BJP in constituencies where other regional parties, such as the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), Sarvodaya Karnataka Party (SKP) headed by farmer leader Chamarasa Malipatil, and the newly formed Kalyana Rajya Pragati Paksha (KRPP) led by former Karnataka minister and mining baron G Janardhana Reddy, are contesting.
Many leaders who launched regional parties are from national parties and their intention was to prove their might to their parent party, that they were powerful ‘individually’ too regardless of the party they represent. Regional parties launched by these leaders had neither ideological conviction nor the support of a powerful caste group. They lacked leaders such as Annadurai, MG Ramachandran, Karunanidhi, Jayalalithaa, NT Rama Rao, Chandrababu Naidu, K Chandrashekar Rao, Jagan Mohan Reddy, Mamata Banerjee, Bal Thackeray, et al.
While some of these regional parties failed miserably in gaining a ‘dignified’ number of seats, others remained content with one or two seats, which were the result of the individual capacity of the candidate and had nothing to do with the regional aspirations of their respective parties.
Chamarasa Malipatil claims that enthused by the response of voters in the Melkote Assembly segment in 2018, SKP is planning to field candidates in Mysuru and Mandya districts, where farmers decide the fate of candidates regardless of caste, creed, and culture.
“In the 2018 polls, the SKP candidate secured 78,000 votes,” Malipatil points out. Similarly, SDPI had contested in three seats – Narasimharaja in Mysuru, Kalaburagi North, and Chickpet. Although its candidates lost the deposit in Kalaburgi and Chickpet, the party fared well in Narasimharaja by polling 33,284 votes. Now having made its presence felt in the local bodies in Mangaluru, Shivamogga, Madikeri, and Chamarajanagar, SDPI is planning to enter the Assembly polls on its own strength. According to its general secretary and election in-charge, Afsar Kodlipet, SDPI is planning to contest in 100 constituencies. If so, the move will be detrimental to the interest of the Congress as it could divide the minority votes, on which the Congress is heavily dependent.
The likely impact of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is mostly urban-based, is yet to be ascertained. It is gauged that Janardhana Reddy’s KRPP is likely to impact the fortunes of the BJP the way the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) – led by former chief minister BS Yediyurappa – did in the 2013 polls. Despite attempts by his former party – the BJP, Reddy remained unperturbed and decided to affect the future of many BJP candidates in the Bellary and Vijayanagara districts. He recently claimed that without the support of KRPP, it would be difficult for the national parties – Congress and BJP – to form a government.
Meanwhile, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which has decided to contest in as many constituencies as possible and announced candidates for a few seats, is learnt to have held talks with SDPI and the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS). In the 2018 polls, BSP contested in 20 seats in alliance with the JD(S) but won only in Kollegal (reserved) constituency.
Browsing through the political history of Karnataka, one can certainly reach the conclusion that there is no future for regional party politics, as the electorate never supported them wholeheartedly as they are the by-products of rebel leaders of national parties, sans ideology. “Of course, JD(S) is an exception because it was a kind of fabrication of splinter groups of the Janata Party,” says Congress leader YSV Datta, who was in the JD(S) till recently.
While regional parties in the neighbouring states, including Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra, were able to capture political power because of their ‘regional political identity’ and continued fight against the Union government’s hegemony, regional parties floated in Karnataka in the past six decades have not achieved success of this kind. Of course, the discourse on the growth and present state of the JD(S) is completely different from the regional parties in strict terms of regional identity.
It is still difficult to conclude whether the JD(S) is a national party or a regional party, as it is a must for any regional party to garner at least 6% of the votes in elections held for the Assembly and the Parliament in a minimum of four states. But the party has remained a kingmaker in Karnataka, coming to the rescue whenever national parties failed to get the required numbers to form the government. Had it responded to the regional aspirations the way regional parties did in the neighbouring states, JD(S) could have emerged as a powerful regional party by this time.
Hanumantharaju, assistant professor, Department of Political Science, Government First Grade College, Nelamangala, in his paper Glory of Regional Political Parties: With special reference to Karnataka (published by the International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts), attributes desire for more political autonomy and freedom of operation from the Union government for the growth of regional political parties in India, especially in Karnataka. “These regional parties try to have their own political identity and want to be free from the clutches of the central government. Increasing interference by the Centre in the local affairs of the states has hurt the regional feelings and local interest,” he observed in the paper published in 2019.
Political stalwarts of Karnataka, including Kengal Hanumanthaiah, S Nijalingappa, Devaraj Urs, Gundu Rao, S Bangarappa, Ramakrishna Hegde, and others have tried their best in experimenting with the idea of regional party politics. But the electorate rejected them lock, stock, and barrel, as they failed in presenting a grand regional narrative that appealed to the people, both emotionally and practically.
Some of the regional parties launched in the past 67 years include Samyukta Socialist Party of Shantaveri Gopala Gowda, Mysuru-based Sahukar Channaiah’s Praja Paksha, Congress (Urs) and Karnataka Kranti Ranga of D Devaraj Urs, Kannada Nadu of AK Subbaiah, Pragati Ranga of writer and journalist P Lankesh, Karnataka Congress of S Bangarappa, Lok Shakti of Ramakrishna Hegde, Kannada Nadu of media baron Vijay Sankeshwar, BSR Party of B Sriramulu, Karnataka Janata Paksha of BS Yediyurappa, industrialist and entrepreneur Ashok Kheny’s Karnataka Makkala Paksha, Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha started by writers and intellectuals, Namma Congress of former minister and MLA Varthur Prakash, Jana Samanya by leaders of the Kalasa Banduri project, Kannada Chalavali Vatal Party of Vatal Nagaraj, Prajakiya of actor-director Upendra, and retired police officer Anupama Shenoy’s Bharatiya Janashakti Congress. However, none of them could make any impact on Karnataka politics.
Some of the regional parties launched in Karnataka over the past 67 years
It is significant to note that Shivamurthy Swamy of Alavandi, Vishwanath Reddy Mudnal, and SR Bommai (father of present chief minister Basavaraj Bommai) launched the Loka Seva Sangha regional party in 1956. This attempt failed because of the Congress wave at that point in time. Though Ma Ramamurthy launched Kannada Paksha in the 60s to uphold the aspirations of Kannadigas, the impact of his party was limited to local body elections. The Kannada Desha Party (KDP), launched by stalwarts of the KRRS including MD Nanjundaswamy, too did not find much success. Though the KDP contested in 111 of the 224 seats in the 1989 Assembly polls, it won only two seats. Similar was the response to the party in 1994, when the party contested in 112 constituencies. This time, only one candidate succeeded in getting elected to the Assembly.
This year’s Assembly polls are an opportunity for Karnataka’s regional parties, as the present BJP dispensation completely ignored regional sentiments by imposing the Hindi language to please the nationalist agenda of the high command. Though the electorate is aware of the fact that the Union government is acting against the interests of Karnataka in terms of land, language and culture, and water, it doesn’t have the choice to support a regional party of some salt that has vociferously opposed the irksome policies. Besides these predicaments, it is clear that none of the regional parties has a manifesto to please the electorate – at least emotionally – on issues pertaining to Karnataka.
Muralidhara Khajane is a senior journalist and film critic. Views expressed are the author’s own.